"Well, I think I've got Father Fontanel frightened," he said, sinking down across the little round table. "He's telling the people to shut up their houses and go to Fort de France. Sixty or seventy have started, and many more have gone up to Morne Rouge and Ajoupa Boullion, where it happens to be cool, though they're just as close to the craters. Fontanel has come into a very proper spirit of respect for Pelée's destructive capacity. By the way, did you hear what happened yesterday, during the darkness and racket while we were at dinner?" "Not definitely. Tell me," Charter urged. "The extreme northern end of the city, or part of it, was flooded out like an ant-hill under a kettle boiling over. The River _Blanche_ overflowed her banks, and ran with boiling mud from the volcano. Thirty people were killed and the Usine Guerin destroyed." "I didn't think it was so bad as that." "I hope I'm wrong, but the Guerin disaster may be only a preliminary demonstration--like the operator experimenting to find if it is dark enough to start the main fireworks. Nobody can complain to Saint Peter that Pelée hasn't warned." "There's another way to look at it," Charter said. "The volcano's overflow into the River _Blanche_ might have eased the pressure upon the craters. I wonder if there is any authority or precedent for such a hope?" "If Pelée's fuse is burning shorter and shorter toward a Krakatoan cataclysm," Peter Stock declared moodily, "it's not for man to say what spark will shake the world.... I tried to see Mondet this morning--but couldn't get in. You wouldn't think one white, small person could contain so much poison. I am haunted with the desire to commit physical depredations." "I think I'll take a little journey up toward the craters to-morrow," Charter confided, after a moment. "They say that the weather is quiet and clean to the north of the mountain. One might ride up and try to reason with _Pere Pelée_----" At this juncture Soronia entered the wine-shop from the little court, to fill the eyes and the goblets of the Americans. A dark, ardent, alluring face; flesh like dull gold, made wonderful by the faintest tints of ripe fruit; eyes that could melt and burn and laugh; a fragile figure, but radiantly abloom, and as worthily draped as a young palm in a richly blossoming vine. She made one think of a strange, regal flower, an experiment of Nature, wrought in the most sumptuous shadow of a tropic garden.... She was gone. Charter laughed at the drained look in Peter Stock's face. "An orchid----" the latter began. "Or a sunlit cathedral window." "Will the visitation be repeated? Do I wake or sleep?" "The years have dealt artistically in the little wine-shop," said Charter. "They say old Pere Rabeaut married a _fille de couleur_--daughter of a former Governor-General of Martinique."